More on how the decline in the mortality rate put the people of London “past all admonitions.” As in the last episode, the author chronicles the city’s return to the usual vices and immoralities once the danger was perceived to have passed (which it had not), and the failure of all attempts to lessen the chances of reinfection. One of the more moving notes in the episode could almost pass unnoticed, so little emphasis is it given, as he describes how people returning from the countryside found entire families of their acquaintance wiped out, so stricken by the plague that there was no remembrance of them, and no trace of their belongings. At the end of this episode, Defoe describes the premature relocation of certain mass graves.
[For notes on the main themes of the novel, visit https://londonplague.com/postscript/. To see some ways in which our reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic are anticipated in the Journal, see https://londonplague.com/concordance/.]
Credits:
Podcast produced by Sam Brelsfoard.
Music from Funeral Sentences of Henry Purcell (1659-1695), performed by the Choir of Clare College at the University of Cambridge, Timothy Brown conducting. Used by permission.
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